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ANS Student Conference 2025
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General Kenneth Nichols and the Manhattan Project
Nichols
The Oak Ridger has published the latest in a series of articles about General Kenneth D. Nichols, the Manhattan Project, and the 1954 Atomic Energy Act. The series has been produced by Nichols’ grandniece Barbara Rogers Scollin and Oak Ridge (Tenn.) city historian David Ray Smith. Gen. Nichols (1907–2000) was the district engineer for the Manhattan Engineer District during the Manhattan Project.
As Smith and Scollin explain, Nichols “had supervision of the research and development connected with, and the design, construction, and operation of, all plants required to produce plutonium-239 and uranium-235, including the construction of the towns of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Richland, Washington. The responsibility of his position was massive as he oversaw a workforce of both military and civilian personnel of approximately 125,000; his Oak Ridge office became the center of the wartime atomic energy’s activities.”
Jean Jacquinot, Guy J. Sadler, The JET Team
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 21 | Number 4 | July 1992 | Pages 2254-2264
Technical Paper | Special Issue on D-He Fusion / D-3He/Fusion Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/FST92-A29719
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A new series of D-3He fusion yield experiment has been performed in the Joint European Torus (JET) using ion cyclotron resonance heating (ICRH) to generate a high-energy 3He tail reacting with a background deuterium plasma. Using recently installed antennas with beryllium screens, radio-frequency power reaching 15 MW can be coupled to the plasma at the fundamental cyclotron resonance of 3He near the magnetic axis. Best results are obtained with 3.5-MA discharges in the double-null configuration with high recycling on the outboard limiters to stay in L mode and to control the plasma density and purity. A record fusion power level of Pfus = 140 kW is obtained, corresponding to a reaction rate of 4.6 × 1016 reaction/s. The amplification factor Q = Pfus/PICRH reaches a maximum of 1.25% at PICRH = 10 MW. The previous best result were Pfus = 700 kW and Q = 1%. Time-resolved measurements show a correlation between fusion power and energy stored in the fast 3He ions in agreement with calculations based on classical slowing down of the 3He ions driven by ICRH to an average energy in the mega-electron-volt range.